One of the more significant developments in the computing industry in the last few years has been the emergence of the World Wide Web (WWW). With the Web, a computer operator, equipped with an appropriately connected computer and a software package called a browser, can explore vast amounts of information stored on computers around the world. Navigating (surfing) the Web is relatively simple, typically requiring only clicking a computer mouse to move between Web documents, even when the documents are located at separate locations.
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is a language used to provide information on the Web. HTML provides a rich lexicon and syntax for designing and creating useful hypertext and hypermedia documents. With HTML, Web designers can describe the format and content of a Web document, which may include, for example, text filed, graphics files, and multimedia files. When accessed by a client computer (i.e., the computer local to the browser), the HTML file is transmitted to the client computer over a network such as the Internet and interpreted by the browser. Other protocols and standards exist for interacting with computers on the Internet/Intranet, including .ASP for a dynamically created Web page that utilizes ActiveX scripting—usually VB Script or Jscript code. When a browser requests an ASP, the Web server generates a page with HTML code and sends it back to the browser. In addition, instead of interacting with an application or a single Web site, .NET can connect the user to an array of computers and services that will exchange and combine objects and data.
Due to the new HIPAA legislation, medical practices (offices and hospitals) need a secure manner to transfer patient information to other medical facilities quickly and confidentially. Current practice is to use the telephone, fax, mail and courier. Problems associated with sending patient information to offices and medical facilities using the fax machine include the chance of sending the information to the wrong fax number, fax being illegible, not all the pages being transmitted, incomplete data, offices losing the faxes that do come through, and no “mirrored” record of delivery and receipt of the information. Problems associated with trying to schedule appointments and transferring information via the phone include no audit trail, playing phone tag and waiting on hold.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method by which patient files and orders can be transferred with minimized phone calls and faxes between physician offices and local hospitals, labs, and the like. There is also a need in the art for the secure transmission of patient files and orders, allowing for an audit trail that shows who, when and where opened, reviewed or acted on a file.